A new herball, or Historie of plants: wherein is contained the whole discourse and perfect description of all sorts of herbes and plants: their diuers and sundry kindes: their names, natures, operations, and vertues: and that not onely of those which are heere growing in this our countrie of England but of all others also of forraine realmes commonly vsed in physicke ... First set foorth in the Dutch or Almaigne toong, by that learned D. Rembert Dodoens ... and now first translated out of French into English.
London, Edm. Bollifant, 1595. Cor. and amended.
20 p. l., 916, [48] p. 20 cm.

Call no.: QK41 .D6 1595

A polymath in an age of polymaths, Rembert Dodoens (1517-1585) studied cosmology, medicine, and geography at the University of Louvain. After being courted by several European courts to become physician, Dodoens settled down as professor of medicine at Leiden, with a particular interest in botanical medicine. Dodoens' major work, the Cruydeboeck (1554), was an attempt to produce a comprehensive pharmacopoeia. Like many works of the period, Dodoens recycled material from previous authors, using woodcuts that had been prepared for the German scholar, Leonhart Fuchs (best known as the namesake of Fuchsia).

Although a French edition appeared in 1557, it was over forty years before Henry Lyte translated Dodoens for an English audience. Lyte provided extensive corrections and additions, though still using most of the woodcuts that had originated with Fuchs.

Title page

Black hellebore: "The Place," "The Time," "The Names," "The Nature," "The vertues" (taken inwardly, provoketh the siege or stoole vehemently, and purgeth the neather part of the belly frÅ grosse and thicke fleume, and cholericke humorsâ¦"), and "The danger"